All the Time He is Given
by Rabbitprint
Summary: Spoilers up to MSQ 5.1, set pre-game. Ran'jit has outlived all of his daughters, save one.


The day he is given the honor of being the Oracle's guardian is the day that changes Ran'jit's life forever.

It is a position he does not expect, but he is glad for it. Unlike his father, Ran'jit was born native to Eulmore; his family washed into the city like so much other detritus, farmers lacking fields and soldiers lacking rank. Unable to carry their wealth within their packs, Ran'jit's parents joined those who had to rebuild their lives by relentlessly bartering out the skills they knew. Eulmore is not a place they belonged to, but they were of practical blood: they knew when there was no turning back.

His father forged the way into Eulmore's army with the grim countenance of a conqueror, rising to the position of its General before dying - like Ran'jit's mother - to the poisonous touch of a Sin Eater. Ran'jit himself managed to distinguish himself first as a skirmisher, and then a reliable scout. His father had become respected among the soldiers of their new city, but Ran'jit knows better than to count on such esteem: respect only means you are volunteered to die faster.

He was born too young to ever know his homeland. By the time he is sixteen, he already knows that his chances of ever seeing it in-person are as good as experiencing a night sky before he dies.

Like him, the Oracle is not a native of Eulmore either. Not by choice. But her talents mark her for war, just as his do. Ran'jit did not know the previous Minfilia - he had been a recruit when she had died, barely older than she had been - but he has read her files, and studied everything he could about her battles after the rank was awarded him. Her previous guardian had died with her, which is noted neither as a disappointment nor an honor in the records: simply a fact as practical as a requisition for fresh boots.

He will do one better, Ran'jit thinks. Neither one of them will die at all.

When she is brought to him, Ran'jit bows. He is twenty-one, just entering maturity: young to be a father, but it is becoming more common since the Flood, even among the longer-lived races. She is young as well, only four years of age since the last one fell. She clings with a white-knuckled hand to the guard's cloak, fisting the fabric tightly enough to bunch it up like a scar.

Ran'jit does not know if he is any less intimidating than the other soldiers, with gold in his ears and his black hair neatly trimmed past his shoulders. All he can tell is that she is nervous. When he straightens up from his bow, he watches the girl shuffle backwards, trying to hide behind the leg of her escort.

"My name is Ran'jit," he says softly, crouching down so as not to frighten her further. "I am your guardian from now on. I am here to protect you, always."

* * *

He sets about his responsibilities in earnest, laying out manuals and lesson plans in neat rows on his desk. Eulmore expects the Oracle to be battle-ready by eleven; the first Oracle was already drawing blood at fifteen, fighting independently in the Voeburtite invasion with no previous combat record. The same miracle must be repeated now. If Minfilia fails, then it is more than soldiers who will die: Norvrandt's hope will falter in equal measure.

Training the Oracle is not a matter of sparring practice alone. She must have a grasp of tactics when moving among troops, and sufficient discipline to listen to orders in the middle of combat. She must be literate, able to read messages that cannot be passed through a courier's voice. She must be aware of battles and formation maneuvers; she must measure the flow of soldiers around her and react accordingly, able to understand her own capacity to injure and be injured in turn. She must be able to look upon violence and not break. Ran'jit has seen recruits drill for years, building false confidence by sparring against training dummies and practice halls, only to have their courage shatter upon the first sight of blood.

She is four years old. She is _only_ four years old. Ran'jit has seven years to train her - if he is lucky - and then Eulmore will send her out to fight.

He flips through the training documents that have been laid down by the previous guardian, seeing only comments about Minfilia's proficiency with a spear, a substitute for her shorter reach. He turns to memory of his own father instead, writing down notes on each stance he learned in childhood. He teaches her in mismatched order, jumping ahead by accident whenever he forgets about a step which has already become natural to him by now, but they practice it all until she can mimic him on her own.

Even combat, Ran'jit knows, will not give his girl all the strength that she needs. Minfilia has no peers. Eulmore's government has decreed that the Oracle is to be held apart from other children her age, lest misguided friendships lead her into rejecting her sacred purpose. The weight of her isolation rebounds upon Ran'jit in turn. As her guardian, it falls to him to teach her proper socialization, how to say _please_ and _thank you_ and _I'm sorry_ when the timing is right. He coaches her to speak without shouting; he practices the use of tableware with her, catching chunks of vegetables that flip off her plate when she scoops them up the wrong way. From his own stipend, he parcels out funds for extra tutors, seeking instructors who can lesson her properly in geography and mathematics and aetheric principles.

It is hard, Ran'jit discovers, to teach a four-year-old who would rather flop down on the ground and wriggle, and who gets tired and impatient without warning. He makes a game out of it to hold her attention; he creates songs and rhymes and stories, giving all the heroes her name. They pretend to defeat imaginary monsters together with exaggerated swings of their fists, stepping through each stance that Ran'jit's father had taught him: the smilodon, the wolf, the raptor.

She is his entire world. He is her only parent.

Everything else falls away beside the importance of taking care of her. Ran'jit answers questions as best he can about Norvrandt's history, and why she cannot have a pet, no matter how small or simple to care for. He listens to Minfilia discover rhymes, repeatedly and with great volume. Her rebellious phrases come and go. She tests her limits again and again, with rising confidence. She steals into his room and puts on one of his uniforms, dragging it up and down the dusty stairs; she pretends to learn how to fish, and then pretends to _be_ a fish, cheeks puffed taut as she paddles through the air and yells when he does not pay attention. Ran'jit's own days are spent cramming everything he can find about educational paths during the day, practicing with her in the afternoons, and then extracurricular activities around that, assembling their meals from the kitchens and adding on extra demands for a young child still exploring their own appetite, instead of standard soldier's fare.

It is the best thing he can do for her, he thinks. Playtime builds strong muscles and bones and an even stronger _imagination_, which Minfilia will need when the time comes to visualize how many eaters might be charging through the underbrush. He claps appreciatively when she gallops through her studies; he gives her rides on his shoulders up and down Eulmore's stairs, trying not to wince when she yanks hard on his earrings like reins. When she squirms under the barrack shelves in search of arrowheads and cobwebs, he hauls her out with mock-growls, wrestling with her as he tickles her belly, and then carefully reminds her once more of the lessons at hand.

Minfilia thrives under his care. As if nourished by his hopes, his daughter grows up brilliant in every way, her height rising along with her courage. She adapts to each stance he teaches her; she stands at perfect attention when she is brought to observe the military briefings. She is Eulmore's Oracle, and the world waits for her to conquer it.

* * *

His daughter is ten when she goes out for the first time with him to hunt eaters together, sleeping in coarse tents and learning how to conserve her stamina for the march. They take only a routine patrol, riding the Ladder up to the Duergar Mountains so that they can trim back any growing infestations. The Sin Eaters have always dominated the higher ground, the dwarves preferring to retreat and shut their gates at any hint of disturbance. It leaves Amity in perpetual need of protection, and the cliffs make it difficult to summon reinforcements without taking an airship across.

He watches Minfilia carefully as a scattered handful of Forgiven Extortions pick at their ranks, nerves shouting all manner of false alarms - but she moves safely within the flow of battle, claiming numerous assists at his side before several smaller Conformities pelt through the fray. Their pale frames ripple sinuously as they nip at the Eulmoran soldiers, fangs bright. Ran'jit backpedals after leaving a seeping wound in one's gut, expecting his daughter to similarly recoil back; instead, surprise lights her face, and then delight as she ducks around its claws, aiming for its belly and striking true.

"You did well, Minfilia," he tells her afterwards, dropping to one knee as he checks her arms for scrapes, and she complains loudly about his fussing.

Minfilia makes her first independent kill at ten. She makes her hundredth before she is eleven years old. When they return to Eulmore triumphant, Ran'jit has already planned how to celebrate.

He sees her off to her arithmetic lessons in the morning, and then spends the rest of the day in the kitchens. What little he remembers of the recipe is like no other food he has eaten in Eulmore before. His thick fingers roll the dough out until it is as thin as he dares make it, dusting each circle with flour after cutting it out. The onions sting his eyes; he does not know which kind to use, and chops up both green and white. From there, he pleats each piece of dough in careful pinches around spoonfuls of ground meat, breaking the dumplings more often than he completes them.

Despite all Ran'jit's dexterity on the battlefield, he is clumsy in what should be a simple task. He doesn't know how long to fry the dumplings and keeps lifting the pan's lid, so that the contents are heated unevenly, temperatures rising and plummeting every time he anxiously checks to see if he's charred them. The pleats of each _gyoza_ come out too dry and brittle, translucent with oil, snapping off in chunks when he prods at them in dissatisfaction. He hadn't flavored the meat strongly enough; when he takes a hesitant bite of one, it is bland even on his tongue.

His daughter laughs at him when he criticizes his own work that night, clustered around the heat brazier that he sets down on the floor of her room, the dinner trays stacked between them. Undeterred by his grumbling, she plucks the biggest one up and jams it eagerly into her mouth for a bite. Excess oil dribbles down her chin - another ingredient Ran'jit failed to measure correctly - and he mock-scowls as he chides her manners, grabbing for a napkin so he can mop at it.

"They're good!" she giggles, muffled around his hand as he wipes at her chin. "They taste delicious, Father, truly they do. You're just like a real cook!"

"Only because you've never had them properly before, child," he counters sternly, though he can feel his mouth trying to smile. "Now, listen. This is _important_, Minfilia, finish chewing properly. When I became strong enough to be worthy of carrying Gukumatz, my father prepared this same meal for me. With it, he said that I was now my own person, and no longer a boy under his watch. I cannot pass the arts of familiar summoning to you, but this tradition remains yours. Save for - save for one exception."

She is attentive now, focused on him in the exact moment that Ran'jit wishes she was most distracted.

Silence seizes his tongue. He had practiced this speech over and over while the _gyoza_ had cooked, oil prickling his hands as it spattered out of the pan, and he still is not ready.

"No matter," he begins, and then restarts, clearing his throat. "No matter how many years may pass, or how big you will grow. Even though you have proven yourself in battle, and are able to fight on your own. I will always be here for you as your father, Minfilia - should you wish it," he finishes, stumbling over the last of it unexpectedly, his breath catching hard as if he has been punched in the chest by a wolverine and the claws yet remain, flexing around his heart.

Minfilia's expression wavers, turning soft before she resolutely shakes her head. "Silly, _silly _Ran'jit. You _know_ that will never change. Even after I beat the Light, and you're finally able to go home and eat _gyoza_ there," she adds, leaping up so she can lunge for him across the rug, swinging her arms around his neck in a hug.

"You should come with me when that happens, so you can learn how they're meant to taste," he replies, catching her easily in the crook of his arm until she gets her footing back. "Once all our battles are done and the Light has been driven back, we can both travel the world as it was intended. We will have proper ones, then. I promise."

She beams at him, one hand sneaking out to scoop up another dumpling, and drips sauce all over his sleeve; he protests with a yelp, and she promptly sits down hard on his leg, forgetting her own weight with childish abandon as if she were six years old again. Ran'jit steadies her even as she tries to shove a _gyoza_ at his face encouragingly, and he has no other option but to laugh along with her.

In that moment, he feels as if there is no Sin Eater which can possibly best the two of them together. They will conquer the Light in glory and see the night return, and they will both live forever.

* * *

Minfilia claims another hundred eaters before the next moon. Then two hundred. By thirteen, her height is coming in with a vengeance, forcing her to reassess her reach; she mows through each battle with glee, already impatient for the next. She has maps of her successful patrols hung up on the walls of her room, and scars flecking her knuckles, and the biggest grin Ran'jit has ever seen on a child before, as if every day is a new delight.

They spend the summer months in Amh Araeng, on a prolonged deployment at Twine. The mines around Nabaath Areng have always been prone to Sin Eater infestations, pooling into the unused caverns and picking off travelers foolish enough to shelter there from the elements. Eulmore's forces could sweep the caves for a hundred years, and still never purge them clean.

Unlike Minfilia's other assignments, this hunt has real prey: they have been sent to chase a Lightwarden.

Nerves run high through most of the camp, but in Ran'jit and Minfilia's tent, they are too busy preparing to be afraid. Ran'jit pours over the records of the Sin Eater migrations that have been noted in the last ten years, reading and rereading the one sighting of the nearest Lightwarden - dubbed Storge, as unfortunate a moniker as the rest. Minfilia spends the time stretching, beginning at the first step of her forms and going through the rest fluidly, slow enough to resemble a dance if one never had the luck to see it in battle.

They are fortunate, in some ways, that the skies are never dark. Their scouts are never surprised by the night: they see the eaters clearly when they come.

Attracted by the encampment, the mass of Forgiven hurls itself forth with no greater strategy than hunger. The first wave is composed of scattered Extortions, frenzied with need. It is a standard rush, a maneuver they have all seen before, and Ran'jit braces himself accordingly. Minfilia cannot be spent upon these smaller fiends; as dangerous as the creatures are, there are worse Sin Eaters surely nearby.

Chaos engulfs them all too quickly. The ground shudders, spewing rubble as patches cave in, swallowing screaming soldiers into their depths. Ranjit is knocked off-balance, nearly colliding with a Forgiven which promptly dies on the nearest longsword. As if the earth were vomiting poisonous mud from its guts, shimmering golems clamber forth from the open crevices, bulging as their limbs rearrange and snap back into place. The air reeks with aether, soured and heavy as a storm.

In the center of the writhing white mass, the wings of the Lightwarden finally rise. It ascends gracefully, lifting like a petal through the violated soil, feathers spinning in a lethal whirlwind around the placid golden coin of its face.

Amidst the panic, Ran'jit looks instantly for his daughter. "Minfilia," he shouts, trying to direct her attention; if the Lightwarden is not repelled here, the wave of fresh eaters it will birth will drive through Eulmore's ranks like a wedge. "We need to drive it off!"

His daughter is just as fast as he is, having assessed the situation at a glance. "I have it, Father!" she yells back, her white sleeves billowing as she ducks around the massive forearm of a Forgiven Indecency when it lunges in a failed punch. Levin-quick, she hauls herself onto its arm, darting up to its shoulder. Without waiting for it to catch her, she vaults off its height into the fray, and then she is gone.

Ran'jit braces himself, preparing to follow - but the Forgiven Indecency shudders as if enraged, the stones of its golem's body rippling before it reorients itself to his direction, and then lashes out.

Time melts together as Ran'jit fights to keep from being overwhelmed, splitting the golem only to be instantly swarmed by half a dozen Extortions. One slams into his chest, knocking him flat and then snapping for his throat. He rolls, kicks out in a blind lash, and then another latches its claws into his leg and drags him back down.

He only rises again at the end of the battle, when they are still dispatching the newborn eaters too sluggish to hatch out of their cocoons properly. The Lightwarden has vanished; with its departure, the worst of the Sin Eaters have escaped with it. Eulmore's troops are still straggling back, medics darting through the field. Barely a third of their number look intact: a monumental accomplishment, when counted against a Lightwarden.

In the silence of their victory, Ranjit realizes suddenly that Minfilia has not returned yet.

He forces himself to comb the field for survivors, moving from cluster to cluster of wounded soldiers as they regroup in small pockets away from the Light-smeared ground. He ignores them all, looking for only one face, one specific uniform.

Minfilia is not among the troops. She is nowhere.

He screams for her before he can stop himself - a primal yell of panic - and then bites down on his own voice, jaw aching as he retraces the direction he last saw her run.

The earth is broken where the Forgiven Indecencies had crawled out, caved in like a crust. Abandoned mining tunnels yawn underneath, winding down into a maze. Foul aether streaks the entry points, already crystalizing the soil over like a potter's glaze.

Only the echo of his own voice returns when he calls her name.

Without waiting for reinforcements, Ran'jit picks his way through the ruins. The tunnels are quiet. He cannot hear if any eaters are waiting. He slips between shade and sun, seeing the sky through pockmarked holes overhead. Old crystals sputter in the walls, persistently waiting for long-dead miners to refresh them. Here and there, white aether smears in streaks across the dirt, and this is what leads him onward.

There is evidence of other soldiers that were unlucky enough to follow the same route: a fallen sword, an empty helmet. All the cocoons he passes here are empty. Rivers of water surface and submerge again, reflecting back the light. Ran'jit follows the natural winding of their course until he turns one final corner, and sees a cave widen out before him.

It is a nest of pure nightmare. The walls are coated with glistening aether, white feathers, and his daughter's blood.

His little girl is in pieces on the ground.

This, of all things, is what stops him. Minfilia is lying quiet and still near the middle of the room, her neck twisted obscenely at an angle. Her face is turned up towards the cavern's ceiling; the flesh of one cheek is scooped out, red and raw. One of her arms is all the way across the field. He cannot see where the other one has gone. Both her hands have been chewed off. Her left leg is out of its socket, twisted loose and held in place by only a few strings of muscle. The right one is gnawed in half.

Minfilia has the Oracle's protection. She cannot be corrupted by the Light.

Instead, the Sin Eaters took her apart.

Ran'jit takes a few, staggering steps forward, pushing his legs like wooden paddles through a swamp. He makes it all the way to her side in fits and starts. Once there, he stands blankly for a few moments, and then lowers himself to the ground beside her ragged body - so much smaller now, with less than half its mass. She is so little again. The eaters have cut her back into a child of four.

The world lurches. He is dizzy, tilting off-center, hearing a rasping noise coming from his own mouth. He cannot breathe fast enough to keep air in his lungs.

Some rational part of his mind - the part that is a soldier - knows that he is hyperventilating.

He must gather his daughter's body so that she can be carried out. He must lay her to rest. But Ran'jit cannot make his mind work in the steps required to make his limbs obey; his thoughts refuse to encompass anything larger than what he looks at directly, so that he stares at Minfilia's shoulder, her knee, her foot, and then back again. He can't figure out how to stand up. How to force his hands to move. One action must lead to another but - like his daughter - nothing connects.

That is how the other soldiers find him, sitting blankly at his daughter's side. They say Ran'jit's name. They ask him things he does not hear. Something has ground to a halt inside him and he cannot make himself work properly, just as his girl can never be made whole again.

* * *

He buries his daughter on the edge of the Split Hull, where they had traveled once to look out at the festering ocean. The cliff stretches out over the waters precariously. The Ladder rises like a gallows at his back.

On that day, the salt winds had whipped Ran'jit's hair into knots. Minfilia's had been tied back; he had braided it snugly that morning with her favorite ribbons. She had turned cartwheels on the cliff's edge, defiant of gravity. When Ran'jit had yelled at her not to be so cavalier, she had stuck handfuls of flowers and grass into his uniform's pockets, laughing before demanding to spar.

Those same ribbons are in his fingers now. There are no flowers left.

It takes him three hours to travel far enough away from Eulmore with her. It takes him the rest of the day to handle the grave. It is evening by the time he returns, and the soldiers who greet him pass along a message as they do: Ran'jit is expected to give his report in the morning, along with the rest of his unit in a routine debriefing for how the Lightwarden was repelled.

Eulmore gave him nine years to love her. It gives him one day to bury her, and one night to weep, and that is all the time he is given to mourn.

* * *

His next daughter is not the same.

She is six years old when Eulmore finds her, old enough to remember the tottering uncle who had been hiding her in a corner of Lakeland, hoping to keep her for his protection alone. In that span, Ran'jit has changed as well. Following his father's legacy, he has risen to the post of General, more out of desperation for anything left to do than real ambition. It is a rank well-earned - largely by virtue of surviving long enough to get there.

But here, back with his daughter again, Ran'jit feels like a cadet barely out of the barracks. Minfilia cries herself to sleep for half a moon, refusing any comfort. Ran'jit sits outside her chamber for all sixteen of those nights, listening to each of her sobs dwindle down into hiccups, twisting the bangles on his wrists like endless golden manacles.

The first time she allows him to sit with her as she eats her meal - a dinner served in the safety of her room, with walnut bread and sweets from the Crystarium traders - Ran'jit finds himself measuring each one of his breaths, watching a face that should have been so familiar turned new now, history erasing itself and starting his daughter over like a second attempt.

She must be strong. Eulmore will not spare her if she is not.

"You do not have to consider me family if you do not wish it, Minfilia," he says quietly, feeling the way they echo a vow made years ago, and which has never stopped being fresh. "But know that I will always think of you as my own flesh and blood."

His first daughter was bold. He approaches his second with more care, aware of how drastically things have changed - with her, with him. Instead of riddle games by the fire, this Minfilia prefers to lean against him while he reads, peering at his books and maps of Norvrandt. He hums half-remembered lullabies and strokes her hair, and she always falls asleep gradually, curling by instinct against his leg until he scoops her up, and tucks her into bed.

She accepts him eventually, frightened more by the stern frowns of Eulmore's officials than by truly adapting to her new home. Compared to them, he is marginally less terrifying. The mayor's son is only a sliver younger than her, and whispers have begun to roam that he is equally blessed - yet, if there is word that the mayor will send his boy to be trained as well in the arts of war, Ran'jit has not heard it.

Such is not his affair. Minfilia is his ward; he has no room to care for anyone else.

But combat frightens her - a product of how she was seized from her uncle late in life, he thinks, fighting back irritation for the poor luck. Soldiers are people to fear, in her world. Her uncle taught her how to cower and how to hide, neither of which will serve her now. She does not have the time to be a child - Eulmore will not give it to her _or_ to him - and Ran'jit feels the desperation of it clawing at him as he pressures her to catch up on studies she is already too far behind on.

When it comes time for his daughter's first showing on the battlefield, she barely leaves a defensive stance. She crouches away from each Sin Eater that comes near her, and it is only when Ran'jit reduces a Forgiven Folly to a crawling mess that Minfilia finally steps forward, and lands a killing blow.

Her courage does not improve over time. The next time he tries to bring Minfilia into the field, her face crumples at the news.

"I can't do it, Father," she whispers, burying her face in his arm to conceal her begging. "Please, I can't, I _can't_ -

He pulls at her shoulder, trying to will courage into her body through touch alone. "Just stay with me," he promises her desperately. "If you should doubt your safety, then look for my banner on the field and retreat towards it. If I am not there, then my escorts will protect you. Come back to me, Minfilia. Come back, and you will be safe."

He cannot enforce it, of course. Now that she is tested, Eulmore wants her in the thick of it. As Eulmore's general, Ran'jit must position himself to lead the whole of the army, and Minfilia is meant to be an independent strike force, rushing forward into any Sin Eater front. She is the shield intended to protect the soldiers from being turned; he is the army's head and heart. They are designed to be separated.

Even so, Ran'jit does what he can to skew each confrontation. Their deployments keep them perpetually on the move, racing back and forth across Norvrandt to try and counter the eaters which have begun to grow restless, Doggedly, he reallocates their formations, positioning him closer to the fore and weathering the brunt of the Sin Eaters which make it through. With time, a fresh line of victories grows grudgingly under his second daughter's name: Eulmore's Oracle has returned to save Norvrandt yet again.

The battle that claims her in the end is no Lightwarden, but a cluster of eaters in Kholusia. The terrain is to their disadvantage: a tangle of canyons which split their forces apart, cliffs which the Forgiven Cowardices can fly across and Eulmore's soldiers cannot. The fighting is brutal and scattered. Sin Eaters yank soldiers off their feet, only to drop them from unsurvivable heights. Eulmore's forces are forced to dodge the living missiles helplessly, watching their own kin plummet to their deaths only a few yalms away in bloody impact. A few are gifted enough in magicks or technique to save themselves in time; the rest smash against the stones. Distracted on two fronts, Ran'jit orders his troops back into whatever cover they can find, flattening themselves back against the cliffs in an attempt to protect their lines.

He is parted from his daughter before he realizes it. Between moments of his attention, her escort spreads out too far forward, struggling against a pack of eaters. When Ran'jit looks again, they have vanished completely.

When he realizes what has happened, he breaks ranks, abandoning every principle of military discipline to run headlong towards where she vanished. Sin Eaters dart for him, hungry for this new chance for prey. Ran'jit ducks around each of them as they lunge for his throat, dodging their corruptive touch, and plunges into the wilderness.

He is faster than thirteen years ago. Ran'jit has added over a decade to his combat experience; he has fought thousands of eaters before, and knows how they hunt. He is stronger. He is desperate.

He arrives in time to see the Sin Eaters devouring his daughter.

Three of them are clustered around her body, their heads down and buried in her torso. Her body jerks in time with their questing mouths. They are long-limbed, lupine in form: Forgiven Clamors, too swift for a fighter with her slower reflexes to stop.

His roar calls all of them to account. They whirl as one, heads lifting; his daughter's innards unspool from their teeth. Their snow white muzzles are caked scarlet with the blood of his little girl.

Ran'jit's fists break each one, spattering them into spasms of mist, and then he is kneeling beside her - but it is too late. Her eyes are already blank and glassy; her skin is turning ashen with death. Her stomach is chewed completely open, scooped out like a fruit. It is too late for any magicks or tonics to save her. Too much of her is already missing.

He touches her face anyway, just in case she is merely unconscious, her spirit retreating in an attempt to preserve the last faint spark of life. He pats her cheek softly, and then harder, whispering her name over and over. His daughter has always been so shy. She will stir in a few minutes, surely. It must be hard on her body to have lost so much blood; he must keep her warm so that she can heal. If Ran'jit gives up on her now, he will lose her, and then he will only have himself to blame.

He pulls off his uniform's coat and tries to lay it over the wreckage of her belly, but the fabric is too rough, and scrapes against a coil of her intestines. He curses himself, lifting the coat up again; his eyes are wet, frustrated with his own incompetence. She cannot heal if her innards are out of her belly. Ran'jit needs to tuck them back into place, but the wound won't recover properly with soil in it, and her intestines have already mixed with the dirt on the ground, fluids clumping in gritty lumps.

He needs to get her clean. With each second that passes, her body cools further thanks to his neglect. His own helplessness is killing her.

When the rest of his forces arrive, he is still there, stained with his daughter's remains. His coat is tented over her body, careful not to rub against her wounds. Her right hand is cupped between his palms. He presses his skin against hers to keep it warm, telling himself that her fingers will twitch any moment now, and she will blink her lifeless eyes and come back to him at last.

* * *

He buries his second daughter beside his first.

His clothes are stiff with her blood. They will never wash clean. He should burn them, discard them for new ones. To do either is to erase his daughter from existence, shoving the fact of her death aside like common refuse.

He buries her with all of her things - the ones belonging truly to her, and not made part of her training. A toy amaro, stitched from leather and velveteen. A leaf she collected from the Forest of the Lost Shepard, dried and preserved. The sleeping blanket she had clung to until she was eight.

She was one Minfilia out of an endless chain, but what she loved was hers alone.

The air has grown no kinder over the years, spitting cold spray from the distant ocean far below. Birds croak at one another from the scraggly trees that have managed to take root on the cliffs.

Ran'jit feels the first touch of winter on the air, chafing his skin as he throws the first shovelful of dirt upon his daughter's face.

* * *

When the next summer churns in, the mayor calls for a demonstration to be held outside the city itself, where all can see. Every citizen and soldier they can reach is to be gathered on the cliffs before the sea, where a dais has been constructed to elevate the mayor and his son above the crowd. Airships cluster in the sky. Whatever the truth, the mayor will spare no one from being exposed to it.

Ran'jit considers the whole business sourly. It had fallen to his soldiers to capture a fiend intact for this affair, one large enough - _grand _enough - for whatever the mayor means to demonstrate. The rumors of the boy's blessings, of course, have not dimmed - but neither have they overshadowed that of the Oracle's powers, either. For all Ran'jit knows, this performance is a theatrical farce.

His soldiers ring the field that has been cleared on the outskirts of Eulmore, safely away from the village that rings its wooden bridges. Noontime light beats down upon them all, only marginally worse than midnight.

In the middle waits the cage.

By virtue of his rank, Ran'jit is forced to wait on the dais with the other officials and the mayor's family. The boy is equally ill-at-ease. At thirteen, he stands as tall as a full grown man, but he fidgets like a babe. "What if the beast is so uncouth that it does not respect my authority?" he whimpers under his breath, even as his father hisses for him to continue waving. "What if it does not... does not _obey?_"

There is a note in the boy's voice - a child's primal fear, an uncertainty in the powers they possess - that hooks Ran'jit with its familiarity, sliding painfully into his chest like the memory of one of his daughter's wails. The mayor hears it as well, his hand slowing in its greetings to the onlookers, though his smile is no less pleasant. "Then you are not truly divine, and are a wasted investment," he answers mildly, his voice tipped with a venom so friendly that it seems at odds with the words themselves. The man glances over to his son; the scowl is noticeable this time. "I have seen you tame the eaters when you were but a swaddled babe in your mother's arms. You are a _god_, boy. _Act_ like one."

Vauthry makes a visible swallow. "Yes, Father."

At the command of Ran'jit's raised fist, the soldiers pull upon the first set of ropes once Vauthry has descended the painted stairwell. The heavy drapes rise, exposing the creature hunkered down within the bars, and shrieks pepper the crowd.

It is a Sin Eater. It is, specifically, a massive Forgiven Enmity - the largest that Ran'jit's soldiers could trap and haul back from Lakeland, capable of transforming any victim unlucky enough to get too close to its fanged maw. Their prize had cost them in many ways. One of Ran'jit's soldiers will never hold a sword again. Two will not breathe, either.

Vauthry walks towards it.

As the boy approaches, the eater's heavy skull swings in his direction. It huffs, shoulders bunching as it gathers its bulk - and then settles down, its heavy mass easing to the floor of its cage, and lays its head flat.

As one, the crowd goes silent.

In the hush, everyone watches as Vauthry reaches carefully through the bars, and touches his fingers to the Sin Eater's motionless head.

The mayor does not flinch, keeping his expression rigidly schooled like a corpse's rictus grin. "Now, General. Have your troops open the cage."

Even faced with this display of power, Ran'jit hesitates. "Sir - "

"_Do it._"

Grimly calculating the distance in case he needs to run it, Ran'jit signals for the second set of ropes. Pulleys groan and creak; the beast does not stir. Slowly, the bars lift away, erasing the final barrier between the Sin Eater and the mayor's boy.

The fiend does not move.

Vauthry is the one who steps voluntarily into the cage, spurred either by courage or fear of chastisement. Reaching out, the boy runs his fingers over the monster's brow once more, and then rests his palm upon its skull possessively as he turns, lifting his other hand in victory towards the crowd: unharmed and in command.

Tentative cheers explode from the onlookers, rising in enthusiasm the longer that the Sin Eater remains docile, until the sound is a unified roar. Others remain speechless, caught in shock. Ran'jit is among the latter, robbed of any emotion save awe as he watches the impossible made real by Vauthry's touch.

Afterwards - once the cage is closed back up again - they flock around the boy, crowding fervently enough that Ran'jit's soldiers have to struggle to push them back. Their hands are outstretched, hoping to be blessed by mere proximity. Vauthry is smiling at them nervously, basking in their adulation even as he spreads his arms in benediction.

Ran'jit stands watching the cage instead; even if everyone else has forgotten the presence of a very large Sin Eater, he has not. The mayor is clapping hard enough for them both, anyway.

"You could send your son to the front lines." He has to say it. Even with the vision blistering in his mind of Minfilia being thrown to waves of Sin Eaters, Ran'jit _must _ask the same of another parent. "You could save many of our soldiers. You could save - _everyone_."

He fumbles for justifications even as he speaks. It would be different if Vauthry fought. Vauthry would not be injured by Sin Eaters - he would be safe, more protected than Minfilia ever could be. Vauthry would never be harmed. It was _better_ for the mayor to volunteer his only child, better in every way than Ran'jit offering even a single daughter of his own again to the war.

But the true nature of the request comes through so blatantly that the mayor catches it without trying, and the delight of it spreads across the man's face like ink through silk. He waits with narrowed eyes, watching Ran'jit to make certain he is listening, and this is how Ran'jit knows: the man wants it to hurt.

With careful malice, the mayor finally leans in. "I imagine you _would _be the expert on such things," he purrs into Ran'jit's ear. "Since that's worked out so _well_ for you and the Oracle, hasn't it?"

The cage is covered up again eventually, the Sin Eater curling up like a lazy housepet which has decided that it has had enough coddling and is rolling off to sleep. Vauthry finally leaves its side. Ran'jit's soldiers know their business: once the crowd has dispersed, they are to kill the eater with spell and spear, not dismantling the cage until it has vanished first.

The mayor waits smugly on the platform until his son approaches, clapping his hand in a hearty display of approval on the boy's shoulder. But in the man's distraction, so focused on his moment of victory, he misses the look that Vauthry delivers him: something ugly, an anger born from being thrust out in front of a crowd to possibly die, made into a public spectacle with death as the wager.

Ran'jit does not miss it. He has raised a child twice over; he knows how to look. Resentment simmers like a scar on Vauthry's face, and Ran'jit thinks,_ this boy will remember_.

* * *

Minfilia goes unfound for two years. In that time, all attention remains on the mayor's child: fifteen years old now, sitting at his father's right hand in council and already holding private meetings of his own. Since the display outside the city, Vauthy's miraculous control over the eaters has been demonstrated publicly again and again, like a parlor trick that the mayor never tires of - but always safely within Eulmore's territories, and never in actual battle.

Frustration plagues Ran'jit with every passing moon. Vauthry's power is like a cake of purest buttercream: every official wants a bite. For the first time, Ran'jit finds himself having to argue on behalf of even _finding_ Minfilia again, indignation rising with each voice that demonstrates just how willing they are to throw his child aside, discarding her in favor of a fresh model.

He has the debate yet again after another dig at the military's expense reports. Their mayor is at the very height of smugness: earlier that day, Vauthry had finished calling down several Forgiven Veneries, and they had fawned in a mute, writhing pile at his feet while the crowd howled his name.

"And of course," one of the trade advisors drawls meaningfully, casting pointed looks along the table, "there has been no word on the Oracle's rebirth, despite the loss of two scouts in Il Mheg, who must now be _replaced_ \- "

Ran'jit snaps out of his inattention; his eyes had begun to glaze over from all the formalities. "We will not rest until Minfilia is found again," he declares. "This army has been her home for over half a century. I have raised two Oracles already. I know what she needs best."

"And you have _lost_ two Oracles, General." The officials around the table exchange a series of meaningful looks, and then, placatingly, the advisor leans forward once more. "Vauthry is more than resistant to their powers - he enforces their complete obedience, while the Oracle can merely claim immunity to becoming one herself. Mayhap the time has come to acknowledge that use of the Oracle should come second to supporting Vauthry." She shakes her head ruefully, the curls of her hair sliding around the velvet shawl upon her shoulders. "At least choose another to be her guardian, Ran'jit. You should have given her up the moment that you became General."

"If a more effective tool then the Oracle exists to protect Eulmore," another man breaks in, "then does logic not follow that it should be used? The Oracle is a substantially _expensive_ investment for so little reward. Can we not simply find a remote cave somewhere - perhaps in Amh Araeng - and pen her up there? If she is no longer needed against the eaters, then it hardly matters what condition she's kept in, does it?"

Drawn in by the dissent, one of the intelligence officials pipes up as well, drumming their fingers upon the table. "I suppose as a figurehead, she remains a beacon of Eulmore's might. And in that regard, 'twould be an insult for another nation to seize that for themselves." They aim their next words directly at Ran'jit, no longer speaking hypotheticals to the crowd. "Mayhap if you were a native to Eulmore, Ran'jit, you would understand what this country means to us - "

"I was _born _here," Ran'jit snaps, finally gathering enough outrage to empower his voice. "And the Oracle has given her life five times over. You overlook such a point at your own risk."

"Well," the official replies tartly, offering a thin-lipped, condescending smile. "Once it was in assistance to the Voeburtites. I don't suppose that one really counts."

"We can find another nursemaid, Ran'jit." The trade advisor again, sensing her advantage and pressing it. "Pay off some remote family in the woods, where she can be safely forgotten within the wilds. Doubtless she'd be far happier. Don't you _want_ her to be happy, Ran'jit - "

That is the breaking point for him. Ran'jit shoves his chair back, kicking it away in pure instinct to free his legs so that he can leap for someone's throat if need be. "We will keep her here at Eulmore. _We_ will find her and we will raise her, and _no one_," he snarls, slamming his hand into the table, "will give her better care than I."

He is roaring, and only realizes the volume of it, the hurricane in his voice, when everyone flinches back. Every part of his being is screaming at a different possibility. If someone else could have done better, given his girls more of a chance for life, then it is Ran'jit's fault for not finding them. It is Ran'jit's fault for how Minfilia has suffered. To even think that there could be such a person, such a place, _the whole godsdamned time_, laughing mockingly even as his daughters died -

No. No, he cannot think of it, or else Ran'jit will break what remains of the world with his own hands.

At the other end of the table, Wrenden has risen to his feet as well, using every inch of his galdjent height to try and calm the room. One of the advisors is barking out outraged demands for the military's airship allocations. Ran'jit cannot look at the others directly; he will murder them if he does.

Only the mayor remains unruffled, seated at the head of the table like a king. "_Really_, Ran'jit," he interjects, tacking on a theatrical roll of his eyes. "There's no need to be sentimental. It's not as if your Oracles are as irreplaceable as _my _Vauthry."

* * *

Despite Eulmore's skepticism, Minfilia appears again, discovered only two years later in a small village that had been trying to use her as a living ward against the Sin Eaters, like a talisman hung in the window to invite good crops.

Ran'jit makes certain to seize her before anyone can protest.

At two years of age, his daughter is younger than ever before, still working through basic speaking skills. Still learning bladder control. She brings with her an entire set of fresh needs that Ran'jit has not learned how to deal with yet, of clothing and sleep and her fingers up her nose the instant he takes his eyes off her. Yanking on his beard and mustache is one of her favorite games. Not all her teeth have finished coming in yet. He gives her one of his bracelets to chew on, and resigns himself to never seeing it again.

It is not a good time for her. It is not a good time for him, either. For all his best efforts, Ran'jit barely has the time for this Minfilia, it seems - not as he should, with these new challenges of staying afloat in Eulmore's new climate. She spends more time crying without him, alternating between his lap and cold rooms where there are only soldiers to watch her.

But he carries her through childhood for a third time, his hair streaked grey instead of black, his fingers aching with age as he hefts her onto his shoulders. They both struggle in different ways. At four, Minfilia begins having tantrums again in public - not from selfishness, but sheer emotional exhaustion, knowing instinctively the chaos that she has been flung into. It affects her sleep schedule as well, constantly disrupting his best attempts to get her onto a regular set of naptimes. She vomits at the slightest change in her diet, nervous and uncertain; she has a fierce loathing of vegetables. She has nightmares constantly, crying as she stumbles into his quarters, and stretches up her hands in a demand to be picked up and held.

Minfilia is not fragile, he knows. It is Eulmore which is doing this to her, forcing her constantly under the simpering gaze of a government that wishes nothing save its own continued comfort in the face of oblivion. She is growing up like an unwanted shadow in the military quarters, instead of standing proud and confident. She can sense the change around her instinctively, seeing the wary eyes of Eulmore's officials as they assess her, making snide, calculating remarks on her value now that they have Vauthry to compare her to.

Vauthry's presence on the gameboard skews everything.

But there is an emptiness inside Ran'jit these days, leaving him feeling as worn and frayed as an overwashed scrap of linen - and his daughter can sense that too, in the ways that he does not try to coach her through her outbursts whenever they occur. There is an exhaustion inside him that never fades. Too often, all he can do is heft her in his arms and carry her away as she sobs into his shoulder, knowing that all he ultimately does is encourage her to keep acting out as a means of receiving comfort. He knows he must make his daughter strong - as strong as she can be before Eulmore comes to break her - but his weariness whispers to him, asking him why he should bother. There is no joy in the lessons he gives her anymore. He knows none of what he teaches will save her, but he must go through the motions anyway.

His daughter tries to learn anyway, for him. She screams sometimes on the practice floor and refuses to go through her exercises, sobbing red-faced as she cannot deal with the expectations they are pushing her towards. Ran'jit keeps reminding himself that she must learn this, she _must_. She must be ready for when they throw her onto a battlefield at thirteen without him, and expect her to survive.

His temper rises more often these days, in lieu of the strength he used to possess. He snaps at his daughter instead of sitting with her patiently, demanding her obedience instead of taking the time to explain why. Nothing else will help. The Sin Eaters will not care how emotionally mature his daughter is for her age, or if she has learned how to share with others, or how quickly she learned how to put on her socks correctly all by herself. It means nothing to them at what age she could count to ten without using her fingers. The Sin Eaters will not care. They will kill her, and Eulmore will gladly send her into their arms, and every other nation - the Crystarium and Il Mheg and the Greatwood - will be just as complicit, accepting her sacrifice and trying to hide their lack of action by calling her death _inspirational_.

_That_ hypocrisy is what his soldiers have given their lives to defend. That selfishness is what his girls are enslaved to in an eternity of suffering, all in Norvrandt's name.

Every one of them is a liar. It has never inspired Ran'jit to watch his daughters die.

* * *

Three years later, Vauthry finally acts.

Ran'jit is in the field when it happens: by no small accident, he assumes, leaving the transition of power uninterrupted by the military. The elections are rushed and unilateral. By the time Ran'jit's detachment returns to Eulmore, all he knows is that the mayor and his wife have simply vanished from public eye into an early retirement, a mere handful of days after Vauthry's eighteenth birthday.

Convenient, that. Vauthry's father had held office for nearly three decades; now the son rises in turn. Hallway whispers had already begun to discuss the boy's suitability for future office, searching for hidden loyalties with all the subtlety of a voyeur groping blindly in hopes of a reward. It had only been a matter of time.

_At least Vauthry is already prepared_, the first obsequious official pipes up, still trying to pretend in fair process. _With his powers, he will easily follow in the footsteps of his father._

_Lord Vauthry. He insists that we call him _**_Lord_**_._

As General, it is within Ran'jit's right to call for an investigation. Yet, as the ceremonies begin in earnest to celebrate Vauthry's new reign, Ran'jit does not voice his thoughts to anyone. Instead, he remembers a day years ago, when a child had been shoved out in front of all of Eulmore's watchful eyes, expected to either perform on command, or die spectacularly to a monster. He remembers the sneering, smug face of the boy's father - and then Ran'jit goes to the oath-taking ceremony along with everyone else.

Even so, despite his attempts to avoid politics, it is only a matter of time before Vauthry calls him into private council.

Eighteen, and Vauthry already is taller than he is. The boy - a young man now, really - has little muscle to him, testament of a comfortable life. His chest is barreled, arms thick as a galdjent's. His golden hair is as wispy as cornsilk, already thinning.

The massive winged lion curled up on his dais is large enough to devour them both whole.

Ran'jit listens to Vauthry's welcoming remarks, but his attention keeps jerking back towards the Sin Eater. The soldier in him will not let him take his eyes away from the creature, expecting at any moment that it will strike. Only gradually does he shift his focus back, and even then, he barely manages due to a different sense of danger that has begun to nip at him: one as faint as a needle's kiss in the middle of a bramble patch, but no less deadly.

"My policies are different from what Eulmore has observed in the past," Vauthry is saying, his voice smoothly practiced. The boy has learned well from his father: his oration is pitched to carry across a room without appearing to shout, all round vowels and rolling syllables. "Like you - like all _true _citizens of Eulmore - I seek an end to these needless aggressions 'twixt man and Sin Eater. Yet Eulmore has ever lacked the power to do so peaceably." His massive hand dips, settling upon the lion's marbled hide, where he strokes it possessively in long, languid motions. "Thus, I have been called forth to bring balance to this tortured world. However, there are some among our officials who have expressed their _reluctance _to what they consider to be a radical change. Perhaps," he continues, arching an eyebrow, "even some among _your_ ranks who feel that a man of my... _refinement_ cannot make the wisest decisions for our military?"

Peace. It feels like a promise dangled so far out of reach for so very long that Ran'jit cannot conceive of it save as an abstract tactical condition, a hypothetical as a night sky. He focuses instead on the tangible politics at hand: the new leadership of Eulmore, the hands who might wish to puppet its military. The cost to Minfilia. "The Sin Eaters wish to kill us. They will not offer a treaty, or terms. What manner of peace can be wrought from that?"

"The _world _is already dead, General." As serene as an eater himself, Vauthry shakes his head calmly, the threads of his golden hair whisking around his ears. "Those _are_ their terms. Have you never wondered before why the Sin Eaters have not lessened in number? Why Eulmore has fought for nearly a century, and never regained so much as an ilm of ground? Beyond the borders of Norvrandt, the soil does not quicken. The waters do not flow. One cannot wash a corpse and expect it to rise back to life." He shrugs carelessly, his shoulders jerkily mismatched as if pulled by strings. "How many of your soldiers have died for nothing, General? How many of the deceased would have yearned instead to live out their days peacefully with their loved ones? If you knew you could give it to them, would you stand by and let them suffer instead?"

Unbidden, Ran'jit's mind goes to Minfilia. He thinks of his father, and the mother he never knew. Yet, what Vauthry poses is not a new form of defense - it is _surrender_. A chance to stop fighting, to lay down weapons and not care for the creatures which will come. To finally, _finally_ rest.

It is a whisper more alluring than anything Ran'jit has ever heard before in his life.

But it does not matter if Ran'jit yields. Whatever salvation he might find - even in death - will not spare Minfilia from hers. It does not change a thing if he throws open the gates of Eulmore now and allows every Sin Eater for malms around to march inside, and turn the city into an abattoir. His daughter will be reborn, and she _will_ be forced back into battle, again and again until the world itself is covered in graves and there are no children by default.

Only then will she be spared. Only through complete annihilation.

"Lord Vauthry," he manages, stringing the words together even as he does not know what he truly argues for, or against. "I saw with my own eyes the miracle that you performed when you were but a youth. If you were to go out on the field, you could stop the eaters from harming any of our soldiers. You could end the conflict without bloodshed, push them back - "

Vauthry _hrumphs_ in his throat. "Now _that_, I shall assuredly not do, General. Prolong this needless agony, when my purpose is to exist as an incarnation of peace? No. I offer instead the path of _true _harmony." The rumble in his chest deepens into laughter, and he spreads his hands, each one broader than Ran'jit's head: like a vulture basking in its own wingspan, knowing the shadow it casts. "Yes, this world must end - but here, in Eulmore, there shall be only contentment, until that final blessed day as the Light takes the last of us into its arms. You and the rest of Eulmore's soldiers must be my messengers. That change must start here, with _us_. Make no mistake, General," he adds. "I mean to end the war. I will end it _forever_."

Others have said those words before. Ran'jit remembers dimly bragging such things himself, back when his daughter had been so strong. But from Vauthry's mouth, those words mean far more than flimsy delusions - and for once, just once, Ran'jit allows himself to consider them.

"If it is peace that you wish to bring, then I will support it," he says warily, still trying to wrestle the shape of Vauthry's ambitions into clear view. "That is what the Oracle and myself have fought for our entire lives."

This hardens the man's eyes. "Ah, yes. The Oracle. That accursed girl." His expression shifts faster than Ran'jit can track it, displeasure flickering away like an eel burrowing into the folds of Vauthry's skin. "Speaking of which - she _is_ still safely within your care, is she not? No other officials with _wild _ideas of their own have come asking after her, perhaps?"

Something in the man's tone alerts Ran'jit on an instinctive level, like hearing a rustle behind him and knowing there is no wind to stir the trees. "Only I have jurisdiction over her," he assures the man. "I took an oath. I will be her guardian until my last breath."

Vauthry's expression is inscrutable as he watches Ran'jit back. Then his shoulders relax, and the moment passes. "Of course, of course," he says, waving his hand dismissively. "How lucky we are to have you indeed, General. It gladdens my heart to have such loyalty at my side. Now, go. I must meditate upon how best to enlighten our people, and teach them how to embrace their fate."

* * *

When Ran'jit leaves Vaurthy's chambers, Wrenden is there.

The galdjent has been Ran'jit's companion for decades, serving as a steady counterpoint in Eulmore's civic affairs, advising its people on matters of less bloodshed but of equal importance. The two of them have long come to an agreement born of mutual respect. Ran'jit knows the man well; he needs little more than to meet the other's gaze for a few moments, and then Wrenden jerks his head to the side with a grunt, and Ran'jit follows.

Long experience has taught them both where the private corners of Eulmore lurk, a trial and error of other people's conspiracies. The upper balconies of the Skyfront offer the best options. Fresh air and the ocean will mask their voices, and they know the pitch of one another's speech, able to follow along in murmurs while body language fills out intonation and intent.

There, Wrenden folds his arms, cutting directly to the matter without pleasantries. "You have heard the speech as well by now," he observes. "What think you of our new mayor?"

Ran'jit buys himself time to think by leaning on the railing. The ocean yawns menacingly below, but he has no fear of falling; there are worse fates. "Once every spring, the Sin Eaters would come to feast on Eulmore like flies. Do you remember, Wrenden? We would have to station patrols in a perimeter for weeks. Yet, in the last eighteen years since Vauthry's birth, can you recall a single time when this city was attacked directly?"

Wrenden gives him the respect of considering the question honestly. "No. 'Tis undeniable that the city enjoys a protection which is intrinsically linked to him." With that, the man takes a deep breath. "I have always listened to your instincts for war, old friend. 'Twas your voice which helped steer Eulmore away from countless unwise aggressions before. And _yet_," he continues, picking his words with grimacing care, "my own senses warn me that we are in no less danger than before. Sin Eaters walk the halls of Eulmore itself! Have we all gone _mad_ to ignore that?"

Below them both, Ran'jit watches as froth licks the shore, flecking the rotting ships that dot Eulmore's sea. Like the hammer of a blacksmith ordered to labor in penance for all eternity, the waves smash mindlessly against the decaying wood, caring little for the history they will one day finish devouring.

The Sin Eaters are the same way, he thinks. They will never stop.

"I have seen every corner that remains of Norvrandt, Wrenden. What the Sin Eaters claim, they keep. Vauthry - Vauthry is _right_," Ran'jit admits, and the words break loose a tide of resignation within him: sweet and numbing, drowning out his final bulwark of resistance like a soldier laying down their spear at last. It is a betrayal in every sense of the word, and he is no less powerless against it. "We _cannot _continue on this way. Eulmore's army, the Crystarium's magicks - _none _of it can undo the damage which the Light has wrought. Even if the eaters must claim the rest of Norvrandt by mere ilms each time, they will eventually succeed. All my army can accomplish is to adorn them in blood." He turns his head at last to look at Wrenden directly, aware of the hopelessness that stands naked upon his face, and not even finding the energy to care about that, either. "Answer me this. Why _should _my soldiers die for those wastrels around Eulmore's council chamber, when you yourself have heard the poison they speak. Why should my _daughter_ die for them, when they would stake her out for the eaters with their own corrupt hands?"

It is Vauthry's words which tumble from his mouth with such despair. But they are _his_ words too, raw and honest as Ran'jit has never shared them before, for fear of hearing them in his own voice.

Even here - cloaked by sea and wind - it is painful how easily they come.

Wrenden's expression attempts to rally, finding enough determination for a frown before even he must accept reality. Sorrow clouds his face, slumps his shoulders. "Where did we go wrong, old friend?" His voice is very soft. "Once, Eulmore rose even higher than the Crystarium with its promises of a new life. Where did we lose our path?"

Ran'jit shoves himself away from the railing. He does not spare the glittering ocean another glance. "This world was always doomed, Wrenden. Our mistake was that we thought we could make a difference."

* * *

Unlike Eulmore's council members, Vauthry is good on his word: he leaves the matter of the Oracle in Ran'jit's care, occupied instead with smothering the few voices still insisting on dissent. Others depart: artisans whose works have fallen out of favor, residents who cannot afford the new price of their own citizenship. A few of the braver officials slip away without any fanfare, offering only empty seats at the council table as notice of their resignations.

Even Wrenden leaves in the end, and leaves Ran'jit behind.

Ran'jit has no reason to join them, even if he could. Norvrandt is too small a world. There is nowhere to possibly run.

The military reduces itself in parallel, moving down into the Understory and reshuffling its ranks. Unseated from their ownership of the Canopy, they must make their new homes in the former gaol, turning cells into bunks and bringing in warmer blankets for the stones. Supplies are at a premium now that Eulmore has begun to be known as a paradise. Its citizens must be indulged, and no luxury comes without a cost.

But there are still battles. Despite the new claims of peace, and demands from some citizens to set aside weapons entirely, Vauthry does not dissolve the army. _The unworthy will always be covetous of the chosen_, he puffs, and this is another thing for Ran'jit to remain grateful for: his soldiers will not be entirely abandoned. Few of them possess the funds to buy their way into citizenship. Without Vauthry's mercy, Eulmore's veterans would be forced to leave the city, or be flung out.

Instead, their work becomes logistical. They must keep the trade lines open, and seize the supplies which cannot be bartered for. Other nations send spies and demands for aid in equal measure. Their foodstuffs begin to struggle, citizens squandering food gaily, ordering entire meals prepared without bothering to take a bite. Meol becomes the new replacement; yet, the first time it is offered to him and Minfilia, she screws up her face in such disgust that he orders it removed from both their plates, remembering her finicky digestion.

Slowly, the sphere of Eulmore's territory ebbs, pulling away from the outside world like a tide that will never return. The Ladder is abandoned. Amity becomes forgotten. Once, Eulmore's armies went out to every corner of the land untouched by the Flood, sending aid to any village that had need. Now those fires are dimming, weary and worn out, until only the barest memory of embers remain.

The only thing Eulmore can protect is Eulmore itself.

In the spring of Minfilia's twelfth year, an outcropping of Voeburtite brigands bubbles up along the Greatwood border, styling themselves the Bloody Stars or Bloody Sky or Bloody _Something._ It's all the same to Ran'jit. They are not the first to try and rally behind an extinct nation, little better than the Nightshade bandits plaguing Lakeland - and for similar reasons, cutting through key trading routes that Eulmore needs for textiles and grain. Though Voeburt itself is long-buried beneath faerie curses, the few loyalists who remain are bitter ones, waving banners for a country they never dwelt in, and spitting bitterness at the pixies from a safe enough distance away.

Annoyances, perhaps. But lucky ones, for how the skirmishes occupy Ran'jit's time. More importantly, they occupy Minfilia's. Eulmore's forces chase the brigands erratically around the edges of the Greatwood for an entire moon, taking their time to sweep back and forth across the territory. Though the prey this time does not include Sin Eaters, Eulmore's soldiers can still be attacked if they travel too far from Vauthry's protection, and the longer Minfilia stays away from the city, the more content the man seems to be.

They are just finishing up in another pass north of Lake Tusi Mek'ta when the bandits finally play their hand at last.

Even Ran'jit is surprised by the charge that comes through the woods: clumsy and lacking any reinforcements, charging into melee range only to promptly crash against Eulmore's defenses. His soldiers close their ranks with little effort, tightening in a ring around the wagons as they look for arrows and spells which do not come. The flurry of blows passes quickly; after one brigand falls, and then another, their enemies finally scatter. Clumps of them break away to flee through the woods, as if hoping the same erratic disorganization might serve them more effectively than it had ruined their attack.

Too easy. Ran'jit frowns at the poor performance. He signals two detachments forward in pursuit, leaving a sufficient guard at the wagons themselves, just in case the assault had been intended as a supply raid. With no Sin Eaters present, then Minfilia should be safe - and even then, she would know better than to pursue any attackers too far. The threat should be contained.

He chooses to pursue the west flank.

It is the wrong decision.

He is faster through the forest than they are, agile enough to run across the heavy, gnarled branches overhead; he catches up with several of the Voeburtites in only a few minutes. They are poor competition. Dying quickly, the biggest obstacle they present is how long they delay Ran'jit. As he catches each bandit in turn, he is forced to try and listen for where the rest are fleeing to, chasing down noises of broken branches and bootsteps that are already dwindling away.

Eventually, even he runs out of leads to pursue. He slows to a halt in the middle of a small clearing, reorienting himself as best he can in the hazy light. Around him, roots rise in thick loops through the ground, as if even the trees had sought to flee the Flood.

It is quiet behind him. It is quiet everywhere, in fact. There is no birdsong, nor sign of any of the Greatwood's usual predators. None of his own soldiers are even nearby.

In the silence, all of Ran'jit's senses suddenly come to high alert.

It is a trap.

He shifts his weight immediately, turning his feet so that he can react quickly in case the ground itself turns poisonous. A snare or explosive would be most logical - the brigands do not seem coordinated enough for more - but no part of the underbrush seems more disturbed than usual. He does not hear the rustle of approaching enemies. If there is a threat, it remains quiescent. Any hostile force that lurks nearby seems content for him to wait.

He thinks back over the movements of his troops, visualizing how each of them should have moved. Half of the Bloody Stars had fallen back to the east. The rest had split away in the direction he had chased - too large a force to not reveal themselves by now, if they are lingering. If the brigands are not attacking him, then they are immobilizing him. If they are immobilizing him, then -

_Minfilia_.

He whirls, abandoning every scrap of caution to plunge directly through the woods without care for what pitfalls he might trip. He does not waste time in backtracking the entire way; instead, he picks the direction that Minfilia's detachment had headed in, chasing down the faint sounds of combat which escalate as he draws near.

Around an abandoned farmstead and its hulking barn, he finds a cluster of his soldiers still fighting, scattered through failed pastures long-lost to the woods. Instinct brought him back, and he follows it now - rushing not towards the largest knot of Voeburtites, but towards the barn, looming with its shuttered windows and rotting planks, offering no hint of what might be inside.

He breaks open the doors just as one of the brigands is cutting his daughter's throat.

Ran'jit is across the room in seconds. Each beat of his heart is one less of hers. The cut is ragged, awkwardly done: the man must have had little experience at killing children before. Her eyes blink in spasmodic flutters, wide with shock.

Most of the brigands escape while Ran'jit is clutching his daughter, trying desperately to stem the bleeding as she gasps up at him, fingers weakening in seconds. A few try to take advantage of his distraction anyway. He rips his own sleeve off to try and slow the blood, frantically applying pressure to the wound even as a knife comes at him from the side. He kills blindly, without finesse, striking out only at the last moment so that he can divert as little attention as possible away from Minfilia.

But she does not have the strength to endure as it leaks out of her, guttering out in weakening spurts of her arteries, a bright, brilliant red like poppies crushed and smeared over her skin. She makes a horrible, burbling whimper at the end - a substitute for the plea that she can no longer voice - and then it is over.

Ran'jit feels all words failing him as well. He cannot make his mouth speak, twisted up and painfully tight. There is a terrible noise coming out of his throat, too anguished to be a moan, too damaged to be a howl.

He was that close to saving her.

Eulmore never trained its Oracle or her guardians in healing magicks, or complex medicines. If they had, Ran'jit might have had a chance to undo the worst of it. But he knows why, he _knows_ why, and the truth of it makes him want to take his own heart out of his chest if it means he can give it to her.

Such a lack of conjury is no oversight, but an intentional decision. Minfilia has never been meant to survive through severe injuries. There is no need to support an Oracle too wounded to fight, not when she will be reborn again in perfect health.

* * *

He has the explanation for the attack out of one of the survivors, a handful of prisoners that had been overpowered in those last few moments where flight had taken precedence. Minfilia had been their target all along. The man snarls at Ran'jit defiantly, accusing Eulmore of not only giving up on the fight, but also restraining Minfilia out of sheer greed - that Eulmore was holding back the Oracle's powers for purchase, a mercenary who might be sent only to countries with enough funds to pay for her.

A common enough complaint - the brigands are hardly the first to fling such drivel - but the ruffian takes it one step further. "She should be _our_ weapon," he hisses, loathing curdling his voice. "She was ours first! She belongs to Voeburt! Better that she died here, if it means she's free _from_ _you._"

Ran'jit executes the man on the spot.

He goes back to the barn afterwards, wiping his hands clean as he pushes aside the splintered wreckage of the doors, and kneels beside his daughter.

There are so many marks upon her, hasty bruises that are mottling further in death. They must have tried to turn her to their cause first, with both word and force. Here was where her bravery shone, his fearful, nervous daughter: she had not given in. She had resisted everything they tried on her, holding out for Ran'jit to come and find her, never once yielding to their threats.

And when she had refused to be converted, they had punished her for it.

In that moment, hatred rushes over him like the clearest, purest waterfall, as dizzying as wine. Not simply for Eulmore, with its ignorant sycophants. Not for the Voeburtites with their selfish self-righteousness - but for all of mankind itself, because _none_ of them see his girls when they die, how strong they are even to the end. How they never let themselves be broken. None of them acknowledge his daughters and how much they sacrifice, dying in agony with no memorials save the expectation of the next.

Minfilia's hands are still bound. Absently, Ran'jit tugs the ropes loose, careful not to damage her wrists. Once she is freed, he gathers her up gently into the circle of his arms for the last time, where at least she will not be hurt again.

* * *

His girl is dead; he knows his duty. For nearly forty years, Ran'jit has known his duty. One Oracle dies. He must find the next.

The cliffside is long. Three graves does little to fill it, marching like markers to the sea.

His only consolation is that he will not live long enough to see it filled.

He makes his way down the sodden path back to Eulmore, letting his wagon creak around the decaying paths rather than risk an aetheryte sabotage. The sullen faces of migrants peer back at him from Gatetown's shacks. They blur together in a nameless huddle, interchangeable with the servants and citizens of Eulmore. They are _all_ the same, willing to squabble and hoard the moment they feel threatened. No amount of finery can disguise that truth.

He must find the next Oracle. Nothing about that has changed.

But this time, when Ran'jit goes to Vauthry, the man frowns. "It was one matter entirely when she was already here, Ran'jit," he emphasizes, holding up a thick finger in warning. "Is it so wise to bring her back here again, when she disturbs my brethren and the people of Eulmore? Why, already they murmur of how they fear her impending return. My poor, innocent flock! If you insist on keeping her, Ran'jit, then you _must_ offer significant reassurances first for their protection."

Ran'jit blinks. There is a tightness in his chest, an uncertainty that he can feel distantly through the numbness amassed there, like a mouse skittering behind a wall of stone. "My lord," he begins carefully. "She will be no threat. I have as little desire to see her wage war as you do. I will keep her out of sight of the Sin Eaters dwelling here. I will keep her confined to the Understory, away from everyone. Allow me to bring her home, Lord Vauthry. I will make certain she _behaves_."

Vauthry inhales deeply; the sound is like a bellows. "She continues to mean _such_ a great deal to you, I see. What a kind, noble heart you have, General. To remain so attached to her, despite her cursed nature!" He cocks his head assessingly, one eyebrow arching in an expression that looks more curious than concerned. "Tell me - what _would_ you do for her, Ran'jit? Are there any lengths to which you would not go?"

The strangeness of the question takes Ran'jit aback. In four decades, no one has bothered to ask such a thing. "What do you mean, my lord?" he asks, puzzled by what should have been obvious facts. "I have sworn to watch over her until the end of my natural days."

Politics have never been Ran'jit's strength. The battlefield has been his domain; there is a clarity in blades, where it is far more obvious when someone is trying to kill you. He had always relied upon Wrenden to grapple with Eulmore's intricacies for him - Wrenden, who had become disquieted with Vauthry even before the man had taken office, and who is now gone.

But relief comes unexpectedly when Vauthry waves his broad hand in dismissal, a generosity that leaves Ran'jit shaky. "We shall see, General. For your years of loyal service, I shall allow you this one chance. Go and fetch your pet. We shall discuss your ability to tame her another day, once she is safely back here - in your hands, and your hands _alone_."

* * *

It takes three long years to find his daughter again. Everywhere his agents go, Ran'jit looks for rebels who might kidnap her first. People of all types have learned that Eulmore pays good coin for an Oracle - the younger the better.

When he finds her at last, kneeling to clean the dirt and tears off her face, he finds himself praying that she will be the last - to which god, he does not know. No divinity has ever answered Ran'jit before. Despite all his hopes, not one of his daughters has died peacefully; violence has claimed them all. Eulmore survives on their blood. Each malm of land is bought by fresh scars upon a young girl's skin.

There is no force that can stop her suffering. There is no creature who will.

No force save one.

Vauthry.

* * *

Life for Minfilia is different under Vauthy's regime. Ran'jit keeps to his promise: he winnows through her training materials and cuts back on anything that even hints towards conflict. The books he uses to teach her to read with are reduced to a paltry collection of children's stories and bland fictions. Her toys are plain blocks and colored cords.

It is a poor selection. Ran'jit does not know how to raise a child without war - but he must learn this, too, a new challenge with every Minfilia. He cannot teach her about the outside world without her wanting to see it; he cannot let her wander outside the Understory, and so her curiosity stagnates, struggling and smothered. She closes herself in where she should have shone, reading faster than his other daughters but speaking slower, awkward with even the simplest conversations. Her physical coordination is weaker than ever before, discouraged from the same wild playtimes he once let her indulge in. She is a shadow compared to the Minfilias who came before - but she is still his daughter, and Ran'jit remains her guardian.

She grows older without ever learning a single combat stance, and he tells himself that he should be just as proud.

It is strange not to let Minfilia roam the halls of Eulmore, to hear her laughter around the corners of the Canopy, and her footsteps pattering in and out of the barracks. But there are more and more Sin Eaters, it seems, whenever Ran'jit visits the upper levels of Eulmore. Gossip is as dangerous as any eater. The free citizens make no secret of their contempt of the military; he notes the disparaging glances they aim toward his soldiers, denying that it is by the military's hands that they are fed at all.

Vauthry's message has been taken to heart. War - and all those who have trained for it - is a source of shame.

When Ran'jit is summoned unexpectedly to Vauthry's audience chamber during Minfilia's seventh year, he follows the command with a shrug. Since reaching his third decade of age, Vauthry's bulk has ballooned substantially, fed by every luxury that Eulmore has seen fit to engulf. The man walks rarely now - but there are no longer any council meetings either, and Ran'jit does not regret the lack.

He refuses the ceremonial bite of meol when it is offered to him, and waits dutifully as Vauthry gathers his thoughts to speak.

"As you know, I have a delicate, trusting nature, General. When that trust is damaged, it sorrows me beyond measure." He places the massive paw of his hand upon his chest. "I have heard a disturbing report, Ran'jit, that the Oracle has been seen practicing what appear to be _attacks _upon a training post. Even worse - I have _also _heard that this is not the first time she has done so."

In that moment, Ran'jit decides: he will find this gossipmonger, and he will kill them.

To Vauthry, he takes a deep breath and inclines his head in apology. "She must have been playing, my lord. Imitating what she has seen of the soldiers' drills. A child's game - little more."

The look Vauthry gives him is unswayed. "I did not expect she would see such things at _all_, Ran'jit."

There is no tolerance in Vauthry's voice this time. Ran'jit's mouth feels dry. He is suddenly keenly aware of the rows of Sin Eaters flanking them, like ivory ornaments drizzled with gilt. "My lord. A child's health suffers if they are restrained too significantly in their growing years, both mentally and physically. Emotionally as well - my lord," he repeats, fearful now of what other stories might have been told about his daughter, tales that he cannot defend against. "She is no threat."

At first, Ran'jit hopes that the explanation is enough. Then Vauthry shakes his head in a deliberate, heavy rejection. "My heart _aches _for your tenderness, Ran'jit - truly, it does. Mayhap it is time to relieve you of your burden after all." He flicks his hand towards one of the eaters, and Ran'jit feels his shoulders tense - but the creature merely lifts one of the trays of sweets, holding it up for Vauthry to consider. "The girl continues to grow, and there are many among my flock who remain discomforted by her presence within Eulmore. They fear that new hostilities may be drawn towards her, even if she may not lead them herself. You must answer how you plan to keep her destructive influences in check - and permanently this time, if you wish to allow her to remain."

Ran'jit watches the man paw at a few of the cookies, shortbreads shedding crumbs across the silver tray. "My lord, the Oracle has not seen the sky since she was three years of age. In all that time, she has not felt the wind on her face, or set foot upon the soil. She does not even know what the ocean _is_, save as a sound and a word. She has never touched a weapon, and knows nothing of war. I have given her no reason to be curious of the outside world - she has no loyalties to it, nor misguided compassion. If she does not train in battle, if she is a model citizen of Eulmore - "

"And yet, her life remains a beacon to those who would seek to upset the hard-won prosperity we have struggled to achieve thus far. Though secluded, her nature torments my beloved cousins, whose duty is to usher in this world to its blessed rest." Discarding the sweets without selecting one, Vauthry waves the Sin Eater away and heaves a sigh, like a landslide settling into place across a village. "Perhaps there is another means of showing the road towards reconciliation and peace. The Sin Eaters must have living aether to feed upon, after all. Would _that _not be a fitting symbol of partnership, if they took nourishment from the very symbol that once threatened them and prolonged this pointless struggle? Yes," the man decides aloud, his voice kindling with inspiration. "That would serve well as a new sign of peace! You would be released from this onerous duty of attending her, and my Sin Eaters would find similar relief. By offering herself as sustenance, the Oracle can atone for her crimes against them - and against _all_ the people of this world - at last."

Ran'jit's breath stops. His lungs have been emptied out and replaced by cold terror: in all his nightmares, he did not think of this.

If Vauthry were any other creature, Ran'jit knows, his skull would already be smashed open as punishment for such a threat. His ribs would be shattered, lungs pierced by bone. There would be no danger at all.

But Vauthry is _not_ of such mundane, flimsy ilk, and that fact holds Ran'jit in place more firmly than any chain. Eulmore's lord is the one force which has ever been able to stop the Sin Eaters - the same beasts which have eaten Ran'jit's girls, and who are no less monsters than the two-legged sinners which have sat in Eulmore's council chambers and discussed how best to sacrifice her. Vauthry alone has no cause to fear the Light, and no reason to fall to the same hypocrisies as the rest of them. And if such absolute power rejects his daughter, then there is truly nothing which can aid her. Minfilia will spend each of her lives hunted out by all the nations of Norvrandt, misused and forced back into a pointless war forever.

She will never be saved. She will never be spared, and there is nothing, _nothing_, that Ranjit can do.

He has never been able to protect his daughters before. This is his last chance.

Ran'jit has never flinched away before from what is necessary. He does not hesitate now. He goes willingly to his knees, hands flat upon the floor. He bows, lower than he has ever bowed before in his life, until he fears that his voice might be lost among the fibers of the carpet with how closely his mouth is pressed against it.

"My lord," he begins: a prayer in truth, and not mere formality. "I will ensure she obeys and remains orderly. I will restrict her to her chamber, and ensure that she never leaves it without a guard. I will allow no one save the soldiers to speak with her, and of them, only those I trust the most." He can barely speak through the tightness of his chest, the horror that has come roaring out of his mind - imagining his little girl brought up to Vauthry's audience chamber, her limbs cut up and parceled out in neat rows like a tray of meats for the eaters to sup on - and he cannot breathe. He cannot breathe. His first daughter is dying all over again. His second is staring at the sky. "I swear it, my lord. I _swear _it. Lord Vauthry, please have mercy upon her. I beg it of you. _Please_."

He waits, adrenaline tightening his throat, as if it could make the decision for him by choking him on the audience chamber's floor.

Then - at last - he hears Vauthry make an atonal, musing hum. "Do not imagine that I have not been grateful for your obedience all these years, General. The military's transition would not have been _half _so smooth without your influence. Even so, there must be limits." There is a rustle of cloth, and then a smack of flesh as Vauthry claps his hands together imperiously. "Hear this, then! By my generosity, I will allow your Oracle to remain in Eulmore, as an example of how even the lowest among us may receive grace. Even _she_ will have a place under my protection, to remain there in safety until this world is ushered to paradise. It is by my will alone that she can be spared! And in exchange, Ran'jit," he adds sharply, "all _you_ need do is help deliver this world into my care. Accept your place as my servant, and your Oracle's safety will be assured. But my heart is a fragile thing." There is no mercy now in the man's imperious tone: the warning is clear. "Do not make me regret giving you a second chance."

Quelling a shudder of relief, Ran'jit climbs to his feet carefully, allowing the precision of the motions to grant him time to compose himself. There is a chill lingering on the back of his neck, a wariness of how calmly Vauthry had spoken - as if the man has already seen the future, and has predicted an execution to come. "I am yours now and forever, my lord," he manages, against the dread in his chest. "You have but to speak your commands, and I will obey. I will eliminate your enemies, and those of all Eulmore. My life is yours."

"Indeed it is," Vauthry's smile is rich and warm with approval. His gaze lids, heavy with overwhelming satisfaction, and in that moment, Ran'jit can see it: the same cunning that dwelt in the former mayor's eyes, rearing triumphant in the son. "Indeed, it _is._"

* * *

His nerves refuse to still even after he leaves Vauthry's chamber. His legs are shaky as he takes the stairs down. Ran'jit has had narrow misses in battle before: the sword on his throat, the claws in his shoulder, the knives raking across his face.

He knows when death has whispered past, leaving only the hint of its kiss behind.

Minfilia's quarters have always been next to his; she has tapped on his door hundreds of times throughout the years, pleading for a hug or another blanket or extra warm milk at night. He will have to move her to a more secure location after this. He will need to assign extra guards.

He pushes open the door to her room after calling her name, and she jerks her head up from the heavy book she had been reading - a different one than she should have had access to. He recognizes its cover. He had written it during his first daughter's time, recording everything about the combat style he had learned from his own father: a guide that she could use to teach herself with, in case disaster claimed him first.

She must have uncovered it from his personal things, Ran'jit realizes. His daughters have always been so curious.

"Look, Father," she says eagerly, unaware of the severity of her trespass. She flips to another section, turning the book around to hold it up eagerly. His own penmanship scratches across the pages, betraying the both of them together. "With this, I can learn how to fight too. I can be strong! I can be like you - "

Panic makes his decisions for him. Ran'jit strides forward and snatches the book out of her hands, flinging it as hard as he can through the door; he hears its papers flutter open in flight, its cover hit the hallway stones and slide.

He is livid with terror. The first thing that he manages to speak comes out as a shout.

"These things are not for you, child!" Not enough. It is not _enough_, she will not understand. He does not know how to say it all, how to encompass the full impossibility of the doom stacked against them. All the confessions he cannot make, all his powerlessness. His dreams for her that are even more futile than a night sky.

He does not know how to say it, and so he says worse things instead. "You are too weak for battle, Minfilia. Remember that. You _cannot_ fight. Only Lord Vauthry can save you! We can do naught but follow his will. You _must _learn to submit to him if you wish to live."

He has a fleeting hope that such anger might be enough - but courage steels her unexpectedly, rising as it always has in so many different ways. "I can learn how to save myself, can't I?" She lifts her chin, looking up at him even as her eyes begin to brim. "That's what other Oracles did. I can be like them. Let me try to help you, Father. Let me _try_."

He can see how badly she is trying to be brave, her lungs breathing fast and hands clenching at her sides. In her face, he can see a girl of eight scowling as she rubs at the bruises on her knees. He sees a girl of twelve, proudly smiling up at him as she presents her last baby tooth. A child of four, crying and crawling into his arms because of night terrors again, her sheets sodden from bedwetting. She is the three-year-old who threw up all across his lap from eating colored chalk; she is the seven-year-old who gave him a concussion while pretending to be a giant spider, leaving a scar on his temple that he carries to this day. She is ten years of age, holding her chin up as blood dries on her split lip, Ran'jit holding her jaw steady as he carefully dabs the wound clean and asks, _do you know what you did wrong, Minfilia_, and hearing back, equally calm: _I should have kicked him in the stones instead of the gut, Father_. _Next time, I'll aim better._

His daughters have each been so different - but they have all died the same way, bound to an endless war wrought by the selfishness of others. It is a mockery that Ran'jit was ever entrusted with her. It is a mockery, save that he is her best option in a world that has already given her up for dead, and that fact alone makes him want to see the Light swallow every ilm of what remains.

He has had a lifetime with his daughters, but he cannot give them lives of their own.

He never has.

_It is by my will alone that she can be spared_, he hears hissing through his thoughts, and the truth of it makes him wish to bow his head and let the axe come.

"Forget such foolish notions, girl," he snaps instead, desperate for her to accept this truth, to know that there is only one path left for them both. "Lord Vauthry will not tolerate such misbehavior. I am his General, and we are both his creatures to own. His peace is your peace. His thoughts are _my_ thoughts. Do you understand?"

She blinks quickly, finally cowed by his declarations, and recoils back with a small, shuffling step - as if Ran'jit has transformed before her eyes into one of the very fiends that would hunt her, hounding her across every corner of the land in hopes of tearing out her throat. He watches her fold back into herself, shoulders hunching and hands clasped before her chest.

Even as he despairs at her rejection, he fears it is not enough.

"Minfilia," he insists. "Do you _understand_?"

"Yes, Ran'jit," she whispers meekly: Ran'jit, and not Father, not ever again.


End file.
